Genesis 21:8-21; Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17
Was your father the kind of guy who always found a “short cut” when driving? Ah yes. The convoluted “shortcuts” that would take three times as long and felt like you had just driven in a square to get to a destination that was a straight line away. But this way was better! More interesting. Less traffic. Fewer stop lights!
Was he the kind of guy who enjoyed a good scenic detour to check out an overlook or see a landmark? And did you groan from the backseat of the station wagon, or the minivan, when a diversion was suggested?
This was not my family’s style but knowing how many of you grew up with engineers, “diversion” and “detour” was probably not part of your vocabulary. I heard about a Dad who gave every family member a file folder at the beginning of the trip with itineraries and maps of every day’s plans. When someone from the back seat asked, “Are we there yet?” They were quickly referred to the aforementioned folder as a point of reference to answer their own question. “You tell me!”
My Dad rarely took the same route twice on his everyday commutes. By the time I started driving I could have known five different ways to get wherever I wanted to go if I had been paying attention. Gene Edmonds was all about a detour or scenic route when starting out on a road trip, when the car was still clean and we all still liked each other. But we all knew better than to suggest the smallest detour once he turned the car toward home. He was a man on a mission. There was no stopping him.
I wonder if (Father) Abraham was the kind of dad who enjoyed a good detour, or who handed out itineraries before setting out?
Genesis means the way something was formed, the starting point, the origin of something. Therefore, I have called this series of stories over the next several weeks, Origin Stories. The “first family” in this set of stories is Abraham + Sarah and their son, Isaac, his wife Rebecca and the next generation of sons: Jacob and Esau. And Jacob’s wiVES (!!) Leah and Rachel. The other side of the family is Hagar, Abraham’s Egyptian slave woman and her son, Ishmael… Is this what is meant by “Biblical marriage?” A wife and a concubine on the side? Or “sister wives” to one husband? As we read these, we want to mine these origin stories for sacred meaning. There is much to glean. But we also need to apply the same discerning lens that helps us with the interpretive space between “then” and “now”[1] to other parts of scripture, especially when it impacts our view of the people on the margins. ***
Hagar has earned a place on the front of our bulletin as an ancestor of our faith. But the Hagars in this world (and their children) are often still the ones we consider illegitimate, wandering in the wilderness of social acceptance. What are we listening for today? Two main ideas… God is present in the plans and the detours. God’s ear is inclined toward the voices from the margins. Are ours?
How did Hagar come to be on the other side of the family? Several chapters ago, Sarah gave her slave woman, Hagar, to Abraham as a secondary wife. Sarah proposed a detour. She wanted to move things along toward the covenant God promised. As a wealthy woman, Sarah had options. In a patriarchal world, a son was economic stability, not only for his mother, but for the matriarch of the family system.[2] It was in Sarah’s best pecuniary interests, but as you would expect it took a toll on her when Hagar conceived and bore a son. In fact, Sarah almost decided that she couldn’t live with her decision and sent Hagar away. But God intervened in the wilderness of Hagar’s life. And God’s angel told Hagar to return to Sarah and to name her son Ishmael (Gen. 16:11). God was present in the detour.
Fast forward to the celebration of the weaning of Isaac (somewhere between 3-5 years old). The milestone is celebrated in children’s lives because they have survived the early years! They are presumed healthy and growing. The narrative switches to Sarah’s point of view. She witnesses the young brothers, Ishmael and Isaac, playing (or “laughing”) together. The Hebrew word translated as “playing with” literally means “making [him] laugh.” It’s rooted in the same word for Isaac’s name. But this word could carry a tone of teasing, making fun. And the mother of the Son of Promise does not like what she thinks she sees – Ishmael, the son of the slave – acting like a big brother. “Perhaps,” Vanessa Lovelace writes, “Sarah feared that affection between the two boys would threaten God’s covenant promise to her son, a promise that [assured their] economic security.” Sarah wants to expel both of them immediately from the tribe. [3]
Abraham is the father to both boys. He and Sarah are not on the same page. Abraham’s vision of God’s plan, his itinerary, includes the other side of the family, which is certainly complex when there is one covenant, but two wives/mothers and two “first-born” sons! The story indicates that Abraham is not ready to discard Ishmael. This is an unexpected detour.
God is in the detours.
For the second time, Hagar is cast out with “the boy.” They are exiled to the desert where after a short time they have consumed the bread and water Abraham sent with them. You can imagine the way Ishmael cried from hunger and thirst. He missed his home. He missed his bed. You can imagine the helplessness Hagar must have felt. She can’t bear to watch her child suffer. Verse 16 says she lifted up her voice and cried. I imagine Hagar crying out as did the psalmist:
“Incline your ear, O Lord!”
“Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me!”
“Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me for I am poor and needy!”
God found her in the desert once before. She cries out on behalf of her son… and finds God’s ear.
An angel of God calls to Hagar telling her not to fear, God has heard the boy’s cries and promises to make a great nation of him (vs 17-18). God opens Hagar’s eyes to reveal a well where she refilled their canteen with water, and hope, and a promise for her side of the family. In the desert, in the detour, this woman who is discounted, who has no agency in her own story, who has never felt seen before God saw her, is now fully seen and heard even as the mother of Abraham’s other son.
God is always at work in the lives of people who live in the margins, the deserts, and the detours.
The question is, are we? Are we brave enough to stand in the margins with them? Courageous enough to navigate the detours alongside them?
The message being sent to women clergy by the Southern Baptist Convention is so problematic because it isn’t just about who gets to preach on Sundays. It wreaks of systemic misogyny that leads to the mistreatment of women, the silencing of girls, of mothers and their children. Even women clergy who have been liberated from such nonsense are still ridiculed, questioned, marginalized because Al Mohler and Clint Pressley say we are dangerous in the pulpit. So, Christians in their churches think it is okay to say:
We do not see you.
We do not want to.
But the God Hagar met in the wilderness tells a different story.[4]
According to the Trevor Project’s 2024 National Survey on LGBTQ+ Youth Mental Health, nearly 40% of said young people seriously considered suicide in the past year. Meanwhile, the state of Alabama, in line with Arkansas, Tennessee, Indiana, and Utah have taken great strides to displace an emphasis on Pride month activities. Alabama named it Strong Families Month. The message being sent to LGBTQ+ people — and especially to LGBTQ+ young people — in those states is clear:[5]
We do not see you.
We do not want to.
But the God Hagar met in the wilderness tells a different story.
The family detention center in Dilley, TX came into the spotlight back in January when a father and his 5-year-old son, Liam, were detained there. The women also detained there, living inside the perils of the center and the system, chose to speak anyway. Like Hagar, they used their voices and held up signs that read in Spanish: Freedom for the Children! They did this while detained, while caring for their children, and while knowing that speaking out rarely comes without consequence. That’s moral feminine witness, practiced where bodies are vulnerable and consequences are real.[6] Just like Hagar on behalf of Ishmael in the detour of the desert.
It’s not just in Texas. It’s also in Etowah County, Alabama. And still many will say:
We do not see you.
We do not want to.
But the God Hagar met in the wilderness tells a different story.
Who is she, [the one] wandering in the wilderness of your heart?
…abandoned in the Beer-Sheba of our cities…
How do we take her back?
Where do we find that land
big enough for us both?
How are we healed of our own cruelty,
sending her, of our own heart,
away, always away?[7]
God’s people, like Sarah and Abraham, we sometimes get it wrong. We have to stop asking, What’s safest for us? And ask what’s best for our neighbors?
God is in the messy margins and the unmappable detours. Are we?
[1] Brueggemann, Walter, Genesis, Interpretation commentary series
[2] Lovelace, Vanessa, Working Preacher commentary Genesis 21:8-21, June 21 2026
[3] Lovelace, ibid.
[4] Birdwhistle, Mary Alice, Substack: The God Who Sees Us, All of Us June 9, 2026
[5] Birdwhistle, ibid.
[6] Brown, Ginny, UCC Clergy, Moral Feminist Witness blogger, The Courage of Those Who Cannot Leave
[7] Garnaas-Holmes, Steve, Hagar, Unfolding Light